Thursday, March 10, 2011

Multiple same-type caps not bad

In discussion of the above with friend, he convinced me that having multiple caps of the same type, even same size (say, two 10's instead of one 20) is not bad and can actually be beneficial, reducing inductance for example. So my current Acoustat modification which puts the new big polyprop in parallel with existing polyprop is not a bad idea.

Also, bypasses of "superior" type are good, such as electrolytic bypassed with polypropylene (better than electrolytic by itself, but ditch that electrolytic and getting big polypropylene is even better if possible), or polypropylene bypassed with polystyrene or teflon. (He also thinks that tiny stacked ceramics can be made with negligible inductance for the ultimate bypass.)

What's not good is the combination of different type caps just for variety, like some audiophiles do, say using oil, mylar, polyprop, and the like together. Oil caps, he says, do have beneficial damping characteristics in power supplies, but beyond that they are inferior to polypropylene in the signal path.